2015 is off to quite a start! Tragedies and fear continue to increase globally, and for many, personally. How to make sense of this mess? Better yet how to make use of it?

As a life coach I get very hopeful when a client is struggling with a problem they can’t ignore, because I know that growth is ready to happen. Very often my job is to help people leverage a break down into a break through.

Senses of the Soul is based on the principle that pain serves to stimulate awareness and action.

Some examples:

– In Selma, televised violence touched the national consciousness for fairness and voting rights.
– A tragedy in my community brought new love and unity.
– My sickness over the holidays helped me to slow down, rest, review and renew.
– A client was treated so poorly by her lover, she finally walked away, which got his attention and changed everything.
– After years of exhausting Anger and distancing after her father left her, a woman is feeling sad and depressed for the first time (breakdown). This is opening her heart to re-connecting and forgiveness (breakthrough).

When you are down and vulnerable, it can bring you honesty, humility, clarity, and resurrection. We need the ability to more quickly connect what happens to us with its cause – so we can avoid negative consequences – and with its purpose – so we can use everything to learn from. How long will it take us to align the outcome that we want with the actions that we take? This is the evolutionary push in our changing times to bring us intuition.

How can you use this idea in a practical way? Start with the premise that every pain, every trouble, every difficulty, every problem is the universe’s challenge for you to learn grow and improve. So when something is happening that you absolutely do not like or want, ask the following questions:
– How can I use the situation to become stronger, clearer, happier?
– How is this the perfect situation I need right now to grow?
– Looking from the perspective of the purpose of my life, why did I/ my soul bring on this experience?

These are very difficult and provocative questions that assume total self-responsibility. But they work! The answer may come fast or it may take quite a bit of time to make sense and use of a challenge. Even of a tragedy. But that is the nature of life and of consciousness, to come through it and prevail. You’ve seen that grass growing through the asphalt. That is what got us out of the caves and out of the plagues and will bring us to peace. So keep up and carry on with consciousness in your individual situations. Make use of every mess. And we will all make it!